Sunday, November 25, 2012

ETL401 Topic 1:UsIng Learning Tools



Introduction
As I work at another university, I decided to investigate search results across both universities so as to gain a better idea as the databases and print collections etc. that impact each Library's search results and how differing results are impacted by the parameters set behind the scenes.

I think it salient to remember/to understand that searching and the search results are limited by what a particular university library holds or subscribes to. While that sounds obvious, it highlights a limitation in many people's understanding of their search results. For example, when possibly trying to do a literature review, like one students may need to do for their IB or when myself, as a Librarian, may do one for work or study purposes.

Primo Search

I never start out with a simple search so I went straight to the advanced search option and typed in teacher librarian and collaboration (as I believe it the most important roles for TLs within their whole school community)...
Results - CSU: 4249 and UNSW:3579 
However, when I delved further into the results, I noticed that while I had used advanced search and had teacher librarian in one of the search boxes, I found that my results were based not on AND (as I had presumed) but were using the boolean operator OR (infuriating!). So I "" teacher librarian and...
Refined results - CSU:1074 and UNSW:976 - what a difference.

What is also of interest (to me anyway), is that the Refine by Resource Type option on the left navigation bar is different - CSU sorts alphabetically, UNSW sorts by number of results. Does it matter? I think so and knowing how many users won't go past a page or two in Google, same concept applies here...if you can't see it listed, you could miss some relevant results. I prefer the alphabetical list as it applies some common sense to searching. 


UNSW Refine My Results by Resource Type 

CSU Refine My Results by Resource Type

The ability to limit my search results further by options down the left navigation bar make it easy to refine the search to a more usable result set. What is also of note, is that with Primo Search being an overarching search tool across many ubiquitous database sets, some of the search results are duplicates. And even if you turn deduping off, book chapters will pop up in the results possibly as well as the whole book. Fine for me who understands but I am know it is confusing to students trying to search usually with limited time frames.

Managing my Information Sources
I prefer to set up and link to my sources from Primo Search (one stop shop approach) . I also like to simplicity of exporting into my EndNote Web Account that I have set up. While I know it has limited functionality as compared to the full version of EndNote 6 for Windows or EndNote 4 for Mac, I need to be able to seemlessly link to my source list without needing to go to DropBox. 

Saturday, November 24, 2012

Blogging my forum posts for ETL401

After typing away madly in my ETL401 Topic 1 Forum, I've decided that I am going to also add my posts to this blog for ease of access (after I finish the subject) and so that I can use for other professional development purposes. Thinking I might use some of my discussions from my posts as the impetus to run classes, share knowledge and stimulate further discussion with colleagues. I also think having all my posts in one spot will be a great way for me to remember all that I have learnt in this course and to reflect on my thoughts and perspectives at the time.

I am also going to bookmark any sites, other social media streams and freely accesible journal articles over at my Diigo Library at http://www.diigo.com/user/skiinglibrarian, just like I said I would a few blog posts back.

These are all my attempts at managing my digital footprint and streamlining my scholarly (and not so scholarly) communications.

Friday, November 23, 2012

ETL401:Thinking About the Broader LIS Profession

Viewing the slideshow by Pew titled Libraries 2020 got me to comparing some of the statistics that they highlighted about Internet Usage in 2000 in the USA and what I was doing then. 0% used social media but I can remember at the time I was working in a public library as the Online Services Librarian and we were already chatting with our clients and I was using RSS feeds to collate all the information I was already pulling from icons in the industry. We were trying to make conversations with our clients...they just weren't listening or most probably didn't really want to chat/interact with the Library. Anyway, just got on the internet wayback machine here to reminisce a bit about what I used to do then (or in 2002 when the snapshot was taken!)...too funny, I remember getting written up in a SLNSW report for creating illogical navigation names like iBranch....hmmmm, thinking we were a bit before our time really! You can find the wayback machine here if you want to have some fun.

There are so many interesting stats on this slideshow but I found it particularly interesting to see the increase usage of search engine from 35% to 54% daily usage. The slides went on to note that most people believe the info they find through search engines is accurate and reliable.. I think the issue for the LIS profession is that we know this belief could be challenged but do users care? Many times it is the not that the information is not accurate rather, it is incomplete...the search engine gives the user an incomplete picture of what they may be searching for. Unfortunately, for the LIS profession if people don't know what they don't know/don't find does it matter? Yes, if they are academics or researchers but the rest of us...

Anyway, while looking at the Libraries 2020 Slideshare, I discovered a related Slideshare presentation from Petaluma Secondary Librarians about "What we do and why it matters"...great overview of a school library and its benefits to the whole school community.